Kristian Blummenfelt & Gustav Iden’s 5 Secrets To Success + Controversial T100 Opinions.

Yes, pretenders, we are back and just like when the knee stale podcast finished,

“the come down from the corner daily podcast has been insane.”

It's felt like it's been six months since we've done one of these podcasts and we've got a completely remember how to do them again.

I'm joined by the usual crew as always the 20 times 70.3 World Champion, the second greatest

tri-threat of all time, Sam Ackleton. It's good to be here, it's good to get that intro again, Jack. Thank you, just, you know, when spirits are falling down, I come on the podcast and hear you read out my, you know, my accolades and I've pumped back up again. Thanks, Matt.

I'm your heart man, and the most opinionated man in triathlon, apparently becoming friends with Christian Blumenfeld as well, Greg Harper. Thanks for having me, Jack, and yeah, I wouldn't say friends, but hopefully a blossoming friendship, and basically that's a life goal, you know, accomplished, so thanks for having me again.

No more details on that story, okay, that one's secret. And the most opinionated woman in triathlon, but also probably the most empathetic woman in triathlon, the former Olympic bronze medalist, the 50-time champion of all these different short course events that no one's ever heard of, Vicky Holland.

“I mean, I think you were trying to be nice, but I think it ended up insulting, but I'll”

take it. Thanks, Jack. Yes, I am back and here, no baby means more podcasting. So we were just talking directly before we style this podcast about the short course racing that happened over the weekend, and Vicky was trying to convince us that it's the best racing

in triathlon. And we decided that we're not actually going to talk about it on the podcast this week, but Vicky just let everyone know who won the grand final in the men's and the women's racers. Sure, so in the women's race, it was Lisa Tersh, who jumped up from fourth in the rankings

to become World Champion, and in the men's racing, it was Matt Halzer of Australia, winning

on home soil and becoming the first man to ever win with the perfect score.

Wow, Jack. I can't believe we didn't want to talk about the Australian winning, the most active triathlon series on the planet. I mean, that's crazy for you. Apple, obviously, you're not Australian, so he don't care.

We need to give Matt his flour as that's an unbelievable season, and we don't talk about short course too much. But yeah, we'll make an exception for the Aussie. You go Matt. Well done, Matt.

He's a fan of Mattie Houser, but just wanting to step up into long course so we can finally start talking about him. I have heard he's pretty good though. OK, guys, to start the podcast, I just had a few little things I wanted to talk about before we get into the meat of the discussion for the day.

But my first thing, I've got back on Strava this week, and I just wanted your opinion on something. Is it acceptable to post your yoga and gym sessions on Strava? Because I followed Cam Wurf during the week, and I found out that he does nothing but post yoga sessions on Strava, and I just hate it.

Is that how it gets his 40 hours a week, huh? It's just like 10 hours of yoga, one hour dog walk. You know, if you track all your training in there, I get it, but yeah, no one wants to see that. So just keep it.

Don't be a greedy, who needs to see it. It's the same with sauna. Yeah, why are you wiping that stuff on? You don't need to put sauna in there.

“I don't even think you need to put gym in there, really.”

What are you doing? You're going around, you're picking up most triathletes to do on some car phrases on the step anyway. You don't need to record your heart rate at 67 beats a minute doing some car phrases. It's not training peaks, though, right?

Why are you putting it on Strava? Is it because you want to link it to your Instagram or your Facebook? And just show everyone what you've been up to.

But yeah, I've never really been wanting to log everything on Strava.

My stuff always just went on training peaks, coaches could see it whenever. And I think I do see because people, again, they share these rides and things across onto other social media platforms. You see, these really elongated titles of what their workout has been. And it will have something in it like, "Oh, didn't feel great today.

20 km long run. Had to go solo. Healy efforts. It wasn't my best." And then you'll look at the details of it.

And then I'll run like four minutes per day or something that's like, "Way too hard." So the athlete that you know they are, and you're like, "Oh, they're just after attention." Like, "I hate that." And then equally, when they're all a bit passive aggressive, you know, when they're like,

"Oh, training partner, let me down today. How to do the 10, 1k is on my own, but tick them off. #Solo #Climitis." You know, like, "Why are you using Strava to get people like, just don't?"

they're like, "Boyfriend or girlfriend or like, they're slow friend."

“And they go, like, "Oh, just recovery run, breathe."”

And then insert that person's name to make it known that they were only going slow because they were with that slow person. They're not actually slow. Yeah, how rude. Do you all that person?

You're like, "We ain't running together anymore, mate." Vic, it's like, "I don't go on Strava." Meanwhile, she has like a bunch of grapes about the horse. This is what I'm saying. He's exactly what I'm saying.

He's a can, got banned. Now again, to the truth of the apple, don't let people know. I'm too angry to Strava. And the other thing I wanted to bring to the table before we get into the podcast is, I want to play a quick game with you, and it's just a quick fire.

You don't have to go into details if you don't want to, but you also can. It's which person is more likely to become a serial killer. Someone who can do a long run on a treadmill, or like a big session on a treadmill that's, say, an hour plus with no headphones, no TV, no nothing just staring at a wall, or someone who goes to the movie's by themselves.

And he's the only two types of people who could become serial killers, is that what we're saying?

“No, I think other people can become serial killers, it's just out of these two who is more”

likely. It's just the movie person logging their movie on Strava, is that why we're bringing it up? No, the movie person's apple. So Jack brought this up because before we hit record, I had a rare weekend where the

wife and sign her out of town and I was like, you know what, I've got the afternoon off, my training's done. I'm going to go to the movies by myself, pack some peanut butter cups, pack to an IPA, went to an empty theater, sat in the back row, and it was magical. You haven't lived if you haven't gone to the movies by yourself.

I'll tell you that. Phone was off, nothing buzzing in my pocket. Oh, take me back. Yeah, but then you added that you do it once a week, like you acted like, okay, the

“way you just painted it was fine and acceptable, because you're like, I've got a break”

from the family, and then you go, yeah, I do it like once every week. Maybe that was an embellishment, once every two weeks. And the treadmill one was because I did a run with Yale Gaines and he did like 15k on the treadmill with 12 by one chaos, completely no music, no TV, no nothing. He just stared at himself in a window the whole time.

Jack, I get both of these things. I get both of them. One is self-care. If you're not heard of this, Jack, it's a big thing these days. Look, and after you meant to well-being totally get it up, I'm with you. You go to that movie theater on your own and zone out. That is fine. And the other one, like, I don't love a treadmill, but I can

and it's it's self-discipline, it's a section, get it done. Like, I get both of them. I don't think we've got any serial killers here. Yeah, Goggons, like I said this to Yale, I said he's got like, that's Goggons approved. Just no headphones on the treadmill. But I don't know, it's either going to make you really tough or really violent. And I don't think there's any in between.

I feel like doing a session is easier, though, because you're like focused on something. But if you're going to like, oh, I did two hour long run easy on the treadmill with nothing. It's like, all right, you're a serial killer. Okay, let's get into that the actual triathlon discussion.

So the first thing we want to talk about on today's show is the T-100 announcing some 2026 updates

to their kind of race schedule and their race dynamics and how they're going to go about everything. So what's changed is that in 2025, they did nine races with the Grand Final in Qatar. And in 2026, they're doing nine races still, but instead of doing mixed gender races, so both genders doing nine races, both genders are going to do four races only. So there's going to be four female races, four male races, and then they're going to come

together for a grand final. So the same amount of races, but far less races per gender or sex, or whatever word we're going to use. The other kind of changes to it are the prize money changes. So they've increased the prize money. So it's 50K if you win one of these races now, which I guess is the big thing, like there's anyone really care about what you get if you you finish second or third, the big thing that everyone looks at is what does the winner get,

and the winner gets $50,000 for each of the race in 2026. And then apart from that, the only other really big thing in my opinion is that they're going no contracts. So the way that athletes are going to become part of T-100 races next year is either through the road to the grand final rankings, the PTO rankings themselves, and some wild cards. So it's a

few changes. What do we make of it all guys? So basically Hayden Wild's going to win 250 grand in

prize money next year alone. Yeah, or actually I should say that the point to go towards your grand final, Tally, are your best three races plus the grand final. So you can miss one of the races. Okay, so I'm the 200 grand for Hayden. Well, he could do he could do all of them if

is there a no rule bonus? Like there is this year, because if so, then that'll go on top of it as well.

They haven't announced to be fairies, which makes you think there probably isn't. I think these changes are good. It seems like a bit of a half step to me though. Like I think we have spoken at length on this podcast before about that nine races this year in 2025 was too many, right? We saw how diluted some of the fields where we saw it will long on the weekend. Like that was a fairly weak T-100 field, I would say. And I think splitting it down to four races plus the

grand final for each gender is good, I think. And you're likely going to get better quality fields

“at those four races, right? It's not going to dilute as much as it did this year. And that's what”

we've wanted. We have spoken about the T-100 and PTO races, right? They're best when they had those

the opens, right? The US open, European open, Asian open, et cetera. And we wanted that back.

I was hoping that they'd open up the field size a little bit more to more than 20. And I don't know if it's been confirmed with how many people are going to be racing next year at each race. But I would like to see 40 to 50 like it was for those opens a few years ago. So I think it's good step, but I still think that needs to be a little bit more refinement in terms of making it really, really appealing from my end. Yeah, the splitting of the races between the men and women

is interesting. They kind of framed it like it was something that the athletes wanted. And I'm just curious if that's like really the case, or maybe they kind of wanted revenue from nine age group races as well, which obviously money is a big factor and what they can do. So I don't love that, but then, you know, we've seen it with Kona and Neese split like the women get their own day. And that's great. And you know, shutting down cities for an extended period of time is

challenging, right? So I'm not exactly sure what went on behind the scenes. Something I don't love right off the bat. But I mean, I guess that's more of an athlete perspective. Like if I was going to go to a 200 race in the race, it'd be cool to have like the women and the men there, like in the hotel do in their thing. But I guess from a spectator point of view, or, you know, even an age grouper shows up like, oh, I want to see, keep while and he'd wild this week.

“Well, you can't. You can only see one of them. So I think that might be a negative”

draw in terms of the age groupers going to the race. On that point, Greg, I sent some messages out to people on the athletes board. I didn't get replied to it by all of them, but I sent some out. And I can pretty much categorically say that this wasn't an athlete board driven decision, like the T-100 have made it out to be. They've kind of said through an Instagram comment, it's where I've read. I'm assuming that's where you saw it too, Greg, that it seems like the

they made it seem like the athletes are the ones who suggested splitting the races. But what what's actually happened is they had nine races last year. They wanted to keep more races for commercial reasons. It's a decision by the hierarchy at the T-100. As we believe, we need more races to make money from this thing, whether it's from broadcasting or age group races or whatever sponsorship. And then instead of just saying that, they've kind of done what Appo said. It's a

half measure. And they've gone, well, let's just keep the nine races and see if we can sell this like it's only four races, you know, like it's four races for the men, four races for the women. Everyone is crying out for us to do four or five kind of races, bigger prize money like it used to be. And they've just gone halfway between those two things. They've tried to keep the nine races right to paint it like it's less races. And then try to say that it's an athlete driven decision.

This wasn't an athlete driven decision. This was a T-100 commercial decision. And it's a half measure to try and get back to when the T-100 and the PTO, whether they're biggest and their most relevant in my opinion. I don't love the splitting of the men and the females. And to go to your

“point, Greg, I think the athlete's really like being all there together. And there's definitely”

a really nice atmosphere with the males and females at the same races. Not to mention, I mean, this shouldn't necessarily be a factor, but a lot of them are actually dating one another. So actually makes their their year quite a lot harder when they're actually having to go to different places. The one of the things I really didn't like that they had this year was almost like a penalty against anybody who turned down their contract. So anybody who didn't want to race the

whole series was never allowed to get a wild card. And I didn't love that whereas that's gone.

Now, so we will hopefully see some of those superstars back racing T-100 who've declined their contract this year. And for me, that's a great thing. To me, it's like, I don't know, just feels like it's kind of the same old PTO doing PTO things. And it's like, will the Singapore and Vancouver dates, they've announced actually be the dates? Who knows? History would say it's probably about a

Like, who knows what's going on with the Gold Coast? Will that even go ahead? No one knows. You know, like, there's just still this kind of stench with the PTO that, hey, you can't fully trust the things we say. And they might happen how we're saying they're going to happen. They might not.

“And I really think that's something they need to try and fix because trust is really important”

in a sport like this where people have to book ahead of time, they have to plan all their travel. They want to feel like these like things are rock solid. And I don't know, this, this announcement to me while there is some positives in my opinion, it's still kind of reeks of like just disorganization to a degree. It pisses me off. So this is your off-grid. If you compare it to Ironman, who announced their 20/26 schedule, and you've got dates for every single race, right? You can plan, you can

go on to Ironman, pro membership now, plan your whole year. And you can pretty much guarantee that all those races are going ahead on those dates, you know, barring weather and things like that. But you can pretty much guarantee that there's not going to be too much shake up in the Ironman calendar. And you can plan your whole 20/26 season, you know, well in advance. Definitely. And this is why it pisses me off because we've been talking about transparency the whole year

with the T-100. They're just not being forthright with all their decisions. I mean, you had freaking Sam Renew on the podcast. He's like, oh, we're, I'm back. I'm, I'm forward facing again. We had a tough time here. I am. I'm back. He didn't mention any of this type of stuff. And we just

never know what they're going to do. And if the races are going to be on the day, they say,

or whatnot. And look, I'll give them some credit for listening to the general public about a few things. But in the end, I don't feel the transparency and exactly what they're doing. And we want

“to. We want to build trust. The age group is want trust. And that's how we have to keep moving”

forward with this brand. If they're going to succeed long term. But do you think that they have this secrecy kind of vibe about them, Greg? Like, like, they, they clear they really do don't they, they have this, like, we're keeping things from you. We'll announce it when it's ready, vibe about them. Do you think that that's because they actually are just secretive? Or do you think it's just because they don't really have things organized? And they're just constantly like a

duck swimming on a lake, you know, trying to remain calm, trying to appeal like they're calm, but underwater, everything's just like chaos. I mean, I think they would, it would, history would show

us when they're changing dates and month out from the race. That the second thing you just said,

duck swimming on their waters, what's going on. But that's okay. Like, I'm okay with that. And I think everyone else is too. Just like keep us a little more in the loop. Like, hey, we're struggling a bit, but like, these are what we want to do. Here's, here's the dates. It could be the weekend.

“It could be, I think everyone will be okay with that, as long as you're like, just being a little”

more transparent. You can build trust through, you know, the truth. It doesn't have to be a perfect well-polished machine. You can't be Iron Man yet. Like, they've been here for too long. And they are a well-oiled perfect machine. Not perfect, but pretty well-oiled. In terms of a business, though. Yeah, they're a good business. Okay, so can we just try and have like a little bit of a group vote. I just want to like, good or bad. And then like, so just one word, good or bad. Increase

prize money to $50,000 for first place. Good. Yeah, good. Good. Splitting the men's and women's

races so that we have four men's, four women's and we come together for the grand final. My initial knee-jerk reaction is bad. Also bad, I think good for PTO maybe is a business, but in terms of you and a participant experience. Yeah, I totally agree with the key. Bad. Scraping contracts and doing it so that it will be a blend of the 2025 race to Qatar, rankings, the PTO rankings, contender rankings, and wild card selections versus the 20

contracted athletes like we've had good or bad. I think scrap in the contracts is good. Good. I'm going to go on the other side and say bad because I think pro athletes need a little stability and I think those contracts did provide that. Keeping the field size at 20 athletes per race instead of opening it to pretty much be as many athletes as we can get on it. Bad. Well, bad because I think it should be more, but I don't think it should be as many athletes as

possible. I think there's a middle ground there. I think it's probably somewhere between 40 and 50 is the absolute maximum. Yeah, bad. More, more please. More athletes. Okay, so I would say from that given that they're the kind of big announcements, there was more bad than good. So that's not really a very positive sign, isn't it? And and we keep saying this word half measure and it's taking me to Breaking Bad, which I've been watching at the moment. And for

all of you out there, I assume you've probably watched Breaking Bad. If you haven't, you might want to skip ahead like 60 seconds so that you don't get anything spoiled for you, but I was just watching the episodes. One of them's called half measures and then the very

where Mike Irman Trout has a conversation with Walter White, and he says no more half measures

Walt. And so Walt then goes on a crazy killing spree. He runs over two people. He gets Jesse Pinkman to shoot Gale Bettaker in the head, and he just fully adopts this no more half measures approach. And it's just so such good timing where this announcement came out. And I just wish that Mike Irman Trout could sit down with Sam Renov and say, "Look Sam, no more half measures. We don't need, we don't need these half measures. Go all in on one thing or all in on the other."

And I feel like 2025, they went all in in one direction. Pretty much I would say most fans thought the T-100 went backwards in 2025 compared to where it had been and say it's peak in 2023 from a fan perspective. And so then instead of changing things to go fully the other direction,

they've just gone halfway. And so I just wish instead of doing the nine races splitting the

men's and women's, they just said fuck it. And they went four races plus a grand final, everyone in, took the prize money from the four races they got rid of. And then it could be 100,000 for the we're not 50,000. And if you've got that, then athletes like the Norwegians, Cat, Laura, Magnus, they're all going to show up. So I feel like they have kind of gone right down the middle. And I don't actually think that that great changes, like I'm not that excited about it.

So yeah, that's, that's that, I guess. Yeah, so Sam Renew, if just if they say no, just kill them.

“Okay. And then all your athletes will be a part of the T-100. Okay. So that's what Jack's getting.”

That's a lighter the way from it, too. That was that's what I got as well. They need the Norwegians at the races. Can we all disagree on that? Like the men's races need Norwegian's next year and however you're going to get them to the race is what you should do. They put a pretty good step in with saying no contracts necessary and better prize money because yes, okay. These people might be focusing on the pro series or they might be focusing on just

the one day events that I am in World Champs, the 7.3 World Champs. But they are going to be drawn to a race that's got a 50 K pool of 50 K winning amount attached to it. That is attractive. And so hopefully that will bring in those names. I totally agree. And I can see a world where some of these athletes do three, maybe four, T-100 races, a 70.3 and the Iron Man World Championship. Like it seems like maybe that's what they're kind of going for. And I see a world

where that happens because the pro series pays drops off. So if you can go now a couple of podiums in a T-100, you might make more money in the end than you could have in the pro series, which is a little bit more up in the air with with Iron Man and just being a little bit more unpredictable.

“What do you guys think though about the idea that all of the races have to be even?”

I still feel like there was space for them to go, let's have like three or four marquee racers, keep nine racers. And instead of doing nine racers at 50 grand for the win, you know, doing three or four that they call their opens. And then all the others have different names. And the opens have, you know, 150,000 for the win or something. But then the other racers only have, you know, 25,000 for the win. Why is that not an option? To me, that's kind of if you're going

to go a half measure, that seems like the better half measure. Hmm, like the Iron Man method, like Iron Man have their pro series, which are their big racers. And then you have the tier down Iron Man's in 70.3s and things. I just think that they, I think they're struggling with the event management side as well. They're finding that a lot trickier. I think then they anticipated. So, yeah, putting on more events is probably more of a challenge to them that they didn't want

to undertake, is my guess. But it's keeping the events the same, right? They've got nine events

“in 2026. And instead of going four men, four women, one grand final, why not go three opens?”

And then, you know, six like whatever they're going to call them, contender series racers or whatever, you know, and then the contender series racers are less prize money. You probably get a little bit of a different field, which I think we saw in Wolongong can kind of be quite fun. You don't

need the best all the time. But then those three racers are always going to dominate the space

that they're in, like the date that they're on. So, I don't know. I just feel like if you put $150,000 on the line for three of them, you're going to get pretty much everyone showing up, whereas I don't think 50 gets it done. I don't think, I don't think 50 draws Christian Blumenfeld and Lionel Sand is in Cat Matthews, you know, a bit of 150,000, I think does Lionel doesn't get out of bed for more than 50 grand does he? Well, that's that. Yeah, that's then. I guess this takes us into our next

topic, which is T-100 Wolongong. So, I don't know. I think the T-100 in Wolongong this weekend was always going to be tricky because it was supposed to be Las Vegas, it got changed last minute. It's so far across the world, so it's hard for athletes to shop, so it became like a wild card

they happened. So, look, there was some things about it that made it tricky, but I think it did kind of sum up the need for change for the T-100, because although if you watched it, it was still quite fun racing and, you know, the commentary was good, the broadcast was good, the crowd looked

“good, I think the event weekend was really fun, but I just think it lacked the kind of pop that”

a T-100 race should have in terms of hype and build up to the race, and I think the week after corona is also tricky, right? It just lacked a lot, and it wasn't partnered with the world triathlon grand final, right? So, this was on the calendar for a long time. You just can't have a T-100 the week after. I mean, we saw it with the Spanish race, the week after niece. I mean, did we even care to watch that? I mean, it's really hard, you've got to do the calendars the right way,

and it's challenging. I mean, putting on events is challenging, but I think that's a big factor.

There's always going to be a hangover from a race like corona when it is the biggest race of the

year, and you want to get eyes on these races. And you know, Australia is the weakest triathlon country on earth, and there's just an Aussie local race. So, you know, no one wants to watch that.

“I'm going to ignore the Aussie digs, because obviously they're not aimed at me, but I think”

before the other two bites, I'll just jump him and say, I didn't watch them live either, because obviously it's a terrible time if you're in the UK. I know what happened. I've seen bits of it. I haven't yet watched the whole thing. I will do. I think everybody knows I'm pretty invested in PTO and the T-100. I work for them not exclusively contracted. So, I'm not, you know, my voice is not buttoned. I can say what I want, but I didn't think this was the best example of T-100 racing.

I totally agree with you. Having it the week after Kona showed in terms of the quality of field, and I think the unintended consequences that it dilutes what it takes to win one of these races. We want these races to be the pinnacle, the best thing, the hardest thing to win in triathlon. It's not when the start-less gets so diluted, and it really takes away from what it means to win a T-100 race. So, I didn't love that. I would also say that I think this was a role reversal

of what we saw in French Riviera. So, in the French Riviera, I think that the world triathlon event, the short course event benefited from having the T-100 there. They got more crowds, more spectators, that were really invested in that world triathlon event. Because they hung around after the T-100, the T-100 felt on the ground. I was there. It felt like the main event and then the world triathlon event sort of felt secondary. I think if it wasn't for the world triathlon ground final that was

this weekend with all the age groups that were there for that with the excitement of it being the

“ground final, I think that's what brought the crowds in to Wollongong and I think that kind of”

saved the event for T-100. They actually got some spectators and there was a bit of a buzz around it. I think they got that from partnering with the ground final. So, I guess on that side, you can say that it maybe it was a smart move for them to have it at this weekend. But equally, maybe they just got lucky. No, I think that's right, Fiki. I think that the T-100 have world triathlon to think there. Because the short course race was by far in a way, the main event,

not even close. And it was popping. Like the crowd there was incredible. And it takes me to a

question. I asked you guys earlier in the year, which is, do you think that the T-100 should scrap the big cities, iconic cities thing and go towards more local communities? Because we've seen it with like topiring New Zealand or Wollongong on the weekend, you get the locals come out and they're not like, if you go to big cities, you're kind of not drawing a crowd in a sport this small, because it's not something that people travel for. You're not going to London to watch triathlon

in the same way you are to watch Manchester United play Manchester City. I don't know, I don't know if they're the two big teams at the moment, Viki, correct me if I'm wrong on that. But you know my point. And then we saw Wollongong. So Wollongong's not, it's not close to the biggest city in Australia. It's not Melbourne. It's not Sydney. But I think you've got a bigger crowd at Wollongong than what you would have at Melbourne, for example. And so do we need to rethink that,

like, do we need to rethink the idea that the big iconic cities are the best place for triathlon? Because I feel like triathlon's a community sport and bigger crowds happen when we go to local communities. Well Sam said that in your podcast, right? He wants big city races. But correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the T-100 races haven't happened in big city races. Like I haven't heard of most of the, like I haven't heard of our Apesa in Spain.

But that was supposed to be Valencia, I can't remember. I never heard of fresh youths in France.

don't know Wollongong as a big city. Like I just feel like what Sam said on your podcast about

“big city races hasn't transpired anyway in 2025. I think it can work in certain cities. For”

example, look at Hamburg. Hamburg has a big Iron Man race that is a huge city in Germany. It's always well supported. It also has a brilliant short course race. Sorry, we've been very short course every today aren't we? But does have pretty much the best short course race on the circuit that's

always incredibly well supported, amazing crowds. So when done well in the right big city, it can be brilliant

and it does draw in the crowds and it looks amazing. But the danger they have a lot of the time is that it gets lost. It's this huge city, this track once happening. A lot of the locals don't care about it. All it does is causing convenience to them as far as their concern. And so it doesn't have that same impact. So I think it's the biggest issue for them. It's just finding the right big cities to host these events in. We all kind of said that we've wanted big city, but I think

maybe more of a hybrid approach where we do community focus first, no matter what kind of city it is. It's probably the right approach long term. I also think that Willengang reen for something I'd been thinking and I've had a lot of conversations with Fred Funk about actually because we both agree with this. Triathlon is really big in certain locations and really small in other locations. I'd been to Singapore three times now. Triathletes not a big sport there. The locals don't

give a fuck about triathlon. And they might try and tell you that it's this massive event. It's not. There's no one there. They have a fun run that draws a lot of people and there is a bit of an age group vibe, but for the pro race, no one's there. And Vicky can probably attest to this. And this happens a lot with PTO events. And I've been to quite a few of them now. Is that no one really cares about

the races. You know, like you go to, like say the first year I was at London, I would have said no

one really was there for the pro race. And then when I was at Vegas, no one was there. Like that was literally empty and Singapore, like I said. But then you go to a place like Willengang that no one's heard of. And heaps of people there because Australia is a massive triathlon country. And they have triathlon fans. And you know where else does Germany? Germany's like the biggest triathlon country in the world. And Vicky use Hamburg as the example. Hamburg works as a big city because Germans love

triathlon. Like look at Roth, look at Frankfurt, look at Hamburg. Why do the T100 not have a racing Germany, but they have a racing Qatar or Dubai or Singapore? You know, like it's, it's absolutely crazy. It makes no sense. If the T100 really want to kick off, one of their main priorities should

be, hey, if we're going to have nine races, what are the nine biggest triathlon countries or cities

in the world? We do everything we can to get into them. Like if they're not doing that and they're going to Qatar. We're coming. There's going to be no one watching the race or caring about it. Or if they are, they've been forced to go there. Like let's just be realistic about this. Why are they not doing that? And Willengang reinforced that for me because Willengang is not a place the T100 would have thought to go to. And yet it was probably the most pop and crowd of the year.

“Because Hamburg doesn't have the oil money that Qatar and Dubai have, Jack. I think that is”

one of the main reasons I would imagine. It would be great to have like maybe two races in Australia like a month apart. So these athletes can go and make a base. Like make a trip out of it too rather than a one-off because like you said, and here I'm actually going to praise Australia here. You're right that it's a triathlon focus country. And that crowd was sick. And the announcing the whole broadcast was fun. And people were like waving their shirts, you know, no shirts on

the camera angles of Willengang look like a nice city. And I have to take a trip. So I think you're spot on with all of that, Jack. It's nice that I lived there for a couple of years, Greg. I'm not going. I just think off the top of my head. I agree, Greg. Two in Australia, two in America, one in Germany, probably one in London. And then look, if they need their oil money, they need their oil money, like Apple says. I think even like, yeah, I don't know. I just think like

St George doesn't have an Iron Man race anymore. 1,200. Why are they not doing a race in St George in 2026? Why are they not trying to infiltrate Toper? Why are they not doing

“two in Australia? Why are they not doing two in Germany? I think it's just so obvious. You get massive”

crowds. They're so fixate on trying to get crowds. You're not going to get them in Singapore. Hate to break it to. It's not going to happen. So, yes. Or honestly, America in general. I mean, I can't really, I mean, maybe bolder, but I don't think these communities rally around the races, like maybe you would think. Like, the people are like, oh, St George track on. Let me go watch. I live in St George. It's like, uh, Americans care about football. Like, they don't care about

traffic on. Yeah, you still have to have it in America though, because it's the biggest market in the triathlon world, even if even if fans don't show up. But I think if you go to local communities in America and then market them there, you're still more likely to get a crowd than what you are in Las Vegas or in San Francisco, which San Francisco is pretty dead as well. We should touch on it

and he's making T-100 extremely boring because he's jogging these runs and still winning it. He hasn't been, he hasn't been tested yet. Yeah, Hayden's laughing and joking with the crowds when he's running. It just like, and the camera. Yeah, it's boring, isn't it? Yeah, and the camera, like, I just want to see these head-to-head races where they're having this ding-dong battle, but Hayden

just makes it boring. He's too good. And so, make a note came second. So, he won the race if Hayden wasn't

there, and you recall and back on the podium in third, and for the women Kate Waff won, really, really impressive, like dominant victory from Kate Waff, which he's done for the second time. This year, falling on from Singapore, like, made everyone else look like they were in a different race, Ash Gentile, the old queen of the T-100 in second, and Sarah Perez-Salla in third, which that's got to be the best result of her career, even though, like, yeah, sure, it's a week T-100 race and

falls off after Kate Nash, but, you know, Ash only just caught Sarah, and, you know, on a different day, Sarah beats Ash there. So, that was an impressive race by Sarah Perez-Salla. He race that morning too, and guided and won. So, yeah, shout out to her. That's like that's a

“really impressive weekend for her. Yeah, I think just before we potentially wrap up on this topic,”

I think the big takeaways that I've taken from everything we've said with all our analysis of T-100 and BTO and all of that is that I think the two big things they need to get sorted are dates, get them locked in early, let everybody know that'll get trust from both the professionals and the amateur athletes to get their everything booked, and so they know they're going to get a race, and look for the right locations, whether that's a big city that they know is going to hit,

or whether that's a smaller location that they also know has got history, like Topor, like Will and Gone, go for those places, get your dates locked in, and they're getting improved so much just with those two things. Vicky, you said before that you're employed by the T-100, but, you know, it's not, you're not a T-100 sellout, you can say whatever you think. Do you think there's ever a world where you get muzzled by the T-100 and can't say anything negative

about them? I don't know, I haven't never happened so far, but then I've not been podcasting for

“very long jacks, well I'll keep you updated. I don't think so, I think they're pretty open to”

hearing stuff and I think they've been pretty good with you jack, you weren't banned for speaking your opinions and stuff, so I like to think they're pretty receptive, and also I like to think everything I've said is been pretty constructive, like I want to see it succeed. It's also in my interest trip to succeed if I work for them, right? So I don't want to pan them, I don't want it to go down the drain, I want it to just be better, because I think our sport deserves it as well. I want

our sport to be seen by more people, enjoyed by more people, more participants, all of that, more prize money, more professionalism, I want all of that, and it only happens if everything just keeps raising the bar. Yeah, Sam Renov once said to me, Vicky, that he purposely goes on slow twitch, because he knows it's going to be negative comments about him and the T-100, and it motivates him. So sometimes he'll be drinking his morning coffee and just reading slow twitch to get him fired up

for the day. So I think he secretly actually likes it when you say negative stuff about the T-100. But Jack just doesn't have a jar with them this year, so watch out, Vicky. It's just a coincidence, Greg. Vicky's been getting lucky, because we've only been talking

about Iron Man. Now it's like kind of our first podcast, whether she's talking about T-100. I'm

scared. I'm scared. And Vicky knows the real story, which is that I was fired rather than anything else. So she knows that I've been lying about that all year. Hey everyone, Sam Appleton here. You know, one of the biggest lessons I've learned over years of racing is that hydration isn't a one size fits all approach. Earlier my career, I used to grab whatever sports drink was on course, and then up cramping, bloated, or bonking halfway through.

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your best, head to precisionhydration.com and use the code TTH25 for 15% off your first order. Trust me, once you dial in the hydration, you'll feel the difference. Okay, and next topic for the podcast, I was talking to Harold Fighten during the week about the fact that the Norwegian's won both Iron Man World Championships. So Solvey Glosseth won the women's Iron Man World Championships, and Casper Stoyner won the men's Iron Man World Championships, and they

and Christian Blumenfeld in third. And I said, look, Harold, the Norwegian methods back, and it's

“because they've gone back to your system. They've moved away from the glove system and they've gone”

back to the Harold's Highten, Christian Blumenfeld, Gustav Eden, Mikhail Eden system. What are the secrets? What are the secrets? And he said, I'll give you a top five list of like the reasons that the Norwegian method works, which is awesome. And so I've got his permission to read these

out on the podcast, and he even gave me them in order of like least to most important. But these are

the five most important things. And he said, there's lots else, but these are the top five. And so what I thought I'd do is I'd read the list and then you guys can have a little group discussion about it. So at number five, identify talent, not by physical measures, but by assessing how hard the athletes want to train and do they want to do it day in day out for years on end. You don't need any other talent ID measures like time trials or lab testing when they're juniors or whatever talent

“testing it is. All you need to identify in your junior athletes or in your athletes in general”

is how hard do they want to work and do they want to do that every day. At number four, extensive use of altitude camps. And so I was talking to Arld about this, the Norwegian's at times have spent about 11 months on altitude camps, but on any given year they're there for like 8 to 12 months of the entire year. So they basically live at altitude and they have very, very short stance at home away from altitude. At number three, very little true anaerobic work as a percentage

of overall training. At number two, extensive threshold work is critical, but it must be controlled

threshold. At number one, I volume training. Well, thanks for bringing us that list jack. Now, I got a question because you're a Mr. Physiology and, you know, Vicki race short course for many a number of years. Number three, like the anaerobic work as a percentage of overall training. Like, if your VO2 max is super good, like some, you know, Christian and Gustaf, I mean, you can get away with it less and maybe if you're not quite as talented, you'd have to do a bit

more or is that more? Am I kind of am I right with that or maybe short course? You need a little bit more. What do you guys think about that whole system for like an athlete who maybe doesn't have the genetic talent of these people of these guys? Well, keep in mind Greg, when it comes to VO2 max most of it is genetic and then another component of it is just Tom training. So the true VO2 max changes, they kind of have to be structural changes in your body, so your heart and lungs,

and that takes a lot of time. So this is where it's quite interesting in that they're saying identify talent not based on genetic markets. Like VO2 max would be a really important one historically because VO2 max doesn't change much. You kind of got what you got when it comes to VO2 max unless you've been doing, you know, aerobic training for 10, 15 years where you've had time for your heart to have structural changes so that your VO2 max does increase. Like you can

only make really acute changes to VO2 max chronic changes to VO2 max are quite a quite a drawn out process and not something that you can just do like in a year's time for example or it

“a very very small amount. So I think that's an interesting question, but clearly that they're just”

saying like we don't really value you doing VO2 max training as part of it and we don't really value your VO2 max being this super high thing. We just want you to be able to work really hard and be motivated to work hard and whatever your VO2 is will make it work. It was interesting listening to the podcast you did with him Jack where he spoke about how it was so different to what he'd been seeing other countries do where they often go very high intensity but very low

volume for the youngsters and he sort of went completely the opposite way because that's sort of what they already knew in Norway for other endurance sports that they're very good at predominantly things in winter sports and I guess I was probably more down the what I would call traditional

other countries line when I was a youngster but I've also never had a naturally high VO2 max. That's

always been my limiting factor is that my VO2 wasn't especially high. I had very good economy inefficiency but I didn't have great VO2 max and so perhaps if I had been doing a lot of volume and just continued doing that for 10 to 15 years maybe I could have made those sorts of changes and you know what I do think it improves towards the end of my career when I did have that amount of time under my belt but that was yes something that I didn't have and so maybe the Norwegian method

was something that I could've used. Do we have a kind of a threshold on where high volume sits at because what's high volume for some is low volume for others right like I think in the professional

say and then 25-25-ish let that mid 20s is medium and then anything close to 30 and above

“is high would you guys agree with that? Yeah I think that there the figures 20 or less is low 25”

is medium 30 or higher is high. Is that um do we know what our all has kind of quantified as high volume there and obviously it's going to change if you're a if you're a talent ID for juniors you know 14 15 16-year-olds you can't expect them to be doing 30 hours a week like I'd imagine 20 hours of training for a 16-year-old is would be considered high volume right? Well I had this exact conversation at a cafe with our old about three months ago or two about two months ago

and no Apple he believes like when he says that high volume is the number one secret to the Norwegian method he means it as a junior as well so they they start doing high volume young and I asked

him that exact question what is high volume and he said 28 30 35 hours you know like just casually

said that and I said even as juniors and he goes as high as you can I just as high as you can where they still want to train they still love it you know and he just said the way they do it

“is by doing everything really easy like they just go they go for a jog and if you have to walk”

up it he'll do it if you go for a hike while you while as part of your jog do it you know like they don't do B2 max swim sessions five days a week like we would in Australia they they really do just go and train very easy and a lot as part of the Norwegian method from a really young age and yeah he said that even as juniors they did weeks of 30 hours per week so it's pretty different thinking but but he thinks the high volume as a junior athlete and then

continuing that into your time as an adult athlete is the number one secret to the Norwegian method

and do you know who else was doing that a young age? Alistair and Jonny Brownlee. They were doing big volumes probably not quite as high as that but I think they were going like 25 hours a week they were using for example like a toe path to ride to school so that they could get the ride volume up and they could they could do all that and you know we've had talent ID coaches in the UK try and tell them when they were younger you're doing too much you're going to be injured all the

time because it was so unheard of no one was doing that but you know Alistair's Alistair he knows best and let's be honest he's paid off pretty well for him. You've also seen it with the Kenyan marathon runners as well I'd throw out there like they do a lot of volume at quite easy

“intensities as well and that's I think the success of Kenya in the marathon and long distance running”

in general. Might also be the drugs and some other things but you know. Easy to do high volume when you when you're doing a lot of drugs over in Kenya okay so read this I mean the the zero to max question and then this high volume chat kind of intertwines in that you people think about the auto max training a little a little wrong you know like it's not just by doing there to max work that you're there to max improves it's actually by training over time so

like a high volume athlete for a long period of time is going to see increases in their video to max even if they do no video to max training which is a concept that is kind of lost a little bit but it makes sense that if you start doing this at 14 or 15 and then by the time you're 24 or 25 which is when Christian and Gustav and Casper and Zoltz Solvic have all kind of started to win their world titles so they've done 10 years of high volume aerobic training

with very little percentage of that being anaerobic work and lots of it being threshold they started to win big races world championship races so it kind of makes sense doesn't it kind of backs the point that you just need like 10 to 15 years of lots of training most of it being aerobic and you will get good in this sport I'm curious and this is happening in swimming too you know there are 14 year olds some in 80k weeks out there I'm just so curious it seems like there's a

new generation of athletes who are in their mid 20s who have been doing high volume since they're a teenager what is 35 going to look like for them are they going to still be in the sport like are they going to be loving it but it seems like no region method like you guys talked about is kind of a culture thing and they're having fun as kids they're just out there exercise and walking up hills doing doing hike or whatever it might be like there's less pressure so

you know maybe they just they've fostered a love that will actually let them have really long careers even though they've been training at a long or high volume for for already a number of years at and they're mid 20s. Tarbs and culture like Yarnford and I said I personally think that all triathletes or endurance athletes in general should be taking career team daily however not all creatines are created equal and in the case of pillow performance as creatine monohydrate it features

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TTH for 15% off all first purchases okay gonna move on to our next topic we're gonna do a bit of a quickfire kona report card this will probably be our last kona chat apart from the Spotify comments which are coming to end the show but we just wanted to go through most of the top 10 and then some other big names and give them a grade from A+ all the way through to F and maybe a short reason why we don't have to give a reason for everyone but if you feel compelled to give a reason go for it

so let's start read the Iron Man World Champion Solvee Glosset it's an A right she won the World Championships you can't A+ can't get any better than that yeah i think A+ I mean possibly could assume a tiny bit better but yeah A+ a bit picky there a+ yeah i don't know i actually struggle with it i think it's A+ i think it's A+ but considering the Taylor and Lucy thing

“is it just an A but no i think you have to cus she won it it's an A+ for Solvee uh cat Matthews”

B+ i've given her a B because i think i think she's still played a bit safe even though she said she had what she didn't have any more i think she played a bit safe i'm getting it A she got

second place yeah A from me cat exceeded my expectations that marathon was proper insane

yeah she played a bit safe on the bike but i don't know what else she could have done like i think she probably just blows up more if she does any more so an A from me as well uh in third Laura Phillip i'm going to say B minus i think exactly what i could have rage at this exactly what you do what i mean i was why we had rages i didn't have apo and vicki as like the harsh critics like oh yeah third in the world champs i was a B minus for you but we're better

next year it's still good okay it's through to it's great we've got all the way to F to go we're in the top echelon still okay my explanation as to why i've gone B minus is because i don't think she had the bike or run that she's capable of i think she did a lot of she was brave she took on a load of the work on the bike but they lost 14 minutes and i think that's why i've had to grate her down a little bit i like fence it's a Greg

A minus for me i mean she's on the podium and i the minus because she won last year she probably wants to win but like if you're on the podium in a world champs it A minus is the lowest you can go um that's that's as low as you can go you're all run it's a B B from me just a straight B no plus or minus i just think that Laura i think she she took all the risks necessary and she probably got the highest finishing result she could have got but i would have liked to have seen

I just go you know what fuck this cat you do some work you know lease a third or you do some work i'm gonna go chill on the back here and if the race gets away from it gets away from me i didn't think she had to take the responsibility of the race on her shoulders as much as she did

“and i think chasing down marge lane pair was the worst thing Laura fell up did for the day”

i still think Laura could have finished for a higher than third i think um i think she didn't run close to her potential that's her good she is uh Hannah Berry hey i've got an A plus i just think she had a great race yeah i just think she had a great race she was off the podium Greg's Greg's flabbergast but she got the people ahead of her i'm B minus this yogurt yesterday i get what you're saying she's raised out of a skin it's the best result she's ever had

you know like when you've won the world championships like Laura has i don't think she raised as good as she did at niece so that's why i gave her a B minus but i think Hannah had probably the race of her life and that's why i've given her an A and i totally agree with everything

to how amazing or bad was that race for them and so for me that's why for Hannah i don't i

don't know how she got better than that and A plus that was she was exceptional for the level of athlete she is four foot world champs and she did everything right i gave A minus because

“you mean the minus because she didn't get on the podium i'm gonna give her an A plus plus i think”

that will go down as the greatest day of Hannah Berry's career and Hannah can use that as motivation and and that could be considered writing her off for next year and the year's going forward it's not meant to be like that i just don't think Hannah will ever have a day where she finishes fourth of the i-man world championships again i i can't believe she did but she did um i i i thought she could finish fifth at absolute like perfect perfect day if everything went right and she finished

fourth so A plus plus for me uh Lisa Pertera i'm gonna say a B i think it was a good solid result B i'm actually on for an A because i think a top five on debut is really good i know we did chat about could there be it could there have been more but we what we were speculating we didn't

“have any evidence that she could go better than that and i just think yeah i think she was really”

solid it's not about placing it's about how she did for herself that you're just comparing her to others whoa whoa whoa don't you throw that in my face okay i'm good i'm going A minus uh yeah i mean

obviously it just really really good race like first time there top five that's uh that's great

a B from me i've got high expectations of leader Lisa Pertera um i think if you went back and looked at i-man like placid i think she was closer to solvig than what she ended up being at Kona i think i i'm going into the race i thought that wherever solvig finishes Lisa can be probably really in two minutes of her and and she just wasn't and i felt like Lisa didn't take any risks on the bike which i'm kind of saying Laura Phillip shouldn't have and then saying well

Lisa should have which maybe doesn't make sense but i know Lisa has a better day on the on the Queen K out and the bike than that so a B uh Holly Lawrence i'm going to go B plus a year after

giving birth i think it's a great comeback only her second Iron Man great race for the same reasons

i've gone for a day minus i think pretty damn good i don't know what more really she could have done on debut yeah B plus for me B plus for me uh jocelyn Macaui hey i think i was a great race by jocelyn and i shouldn't have been surprised but i was and i didn't really have her in my top 10 little-own seventh so great race i've gone a star because when we know the context of what we do now know about jocelyn's previous 18 months and all the rest of it's happened absolutely career best

result in kona again i don't know what she could have done that was better so for me for her a gate to South Greg think a plus a star depends what you would call it well she could have

“ran better so that's why i'm giving her a B plus yep i'm with you Greg i think B plus i think”

many people are surprised about jocelyn's result but i actually think she has way more to give and i fully expect her to finish top five next year um this one kills me to bring up but Sarah's banks a plus plus plus plus no i'm gonna say a minus b plus i think yeah great race um eight ran from way back she was a pretty far back off the bike but had an awesome run one of the i think four fastest run to run into eighth great race yeah same reasons i've given her an

age she was like the terminator coming through that field so yeah a yep b plus for me swim letter down a little bit same as Hannah Berry a plus i think this will be the the best day of Sarah's banks is career the pride of sweet um tailing him that's such a hard run because she was at like a plus all day until the last two miles so what do you like what do you give that do you then she d and f so do you go ahead and make a decision apple i mean i'm gonna say

a b i just think she raced well all day lost it lost a few points at the end in the last couple of miles which was a shame to see so i've docked her a few points for the d and f unfortunately yeah i i think the same i was like she either gets an a star or she gets an f because she didn't finish that how do we how do you balance that out but yeah i've gone for a b on the basis that three more kilometers and we wouldn't have been questioning any of those other little things

that she did um but because of the the unfortunately d and f yeah b fatailer yeah i'm going f like

the end she showed up to finish her is she didn't that's an f obviously there's an amazing

“thing she did out there but based on this great f i'm going to give Taylor an a plus and the”

reason why isn't that much about the race it's the fact that Taylor was sick leading into the race and i don't think anyone knows that and we've seen other people who might be leading the i man world championships at 39k and collapse on the side of the road they might go to instagram and post a long story about how they got sick all of their symptoms why that was the reason they collapse Taylor hasn't done any of that she hasn't talked about it once i don't think she's publicly

said it once and so i'm saying it for her she was sick before that race and she made it to 39 kilometers in the lead so yeah i just give her an a plus for not mentioning that she was sick leading into the race and just falling on her sword um Lucy Charles Barclay i mean it's a b again whatever i give Taylor i give Lucy's a b for the same reasons um i went half about lower b minus because i really

“feel like she raced Taylor too much i think she got too caught up in racing Taylor rather than”

sticking exactly to her plan to be completely rolled on that but that was just a feeling i had watching her it's gonna be an F from me dog and the words of Simon Kale no it's Randy Randy god it's Randy sorry yeah Lucy Charles Barclay i think is a oh i think it's a C because i think Lucy should have won that race especially knowing that Taylor probably was there for the taking by Lucy i don't know i just i feel like i feel like Taylor's going to win next year and is the

best athlete in that field but i think Lucy Charles Barclay was the healthiest fetus athlete on that day so i see from me um let's quickfire these next names we won't give reasons we'll just give quickfire ones so jacky herring c minus c c plus c minus penny slater c minus d sorry penny f d enough d indialy c b minus c b plus marginal ampia c d b minus d minus mata sances and i mean it was a d and f so probably a d sorry mata c minus this is horrible if you

could see our faces i'm finally the f i can't wait i fucking can't wait till Greg races

Conan actually i pray what the f was uh mata's mata's mata's mata's f as well Charles is a d same d f d minus tamrajua c go for an e sorry tamraj a what and e comes off to d it's the for a we don't do e's in the america it's a d get into that yeah what is like uh c's average and then d's like blow average but you didn't fail and then fail like what is e like you just like extra stuff just a letter and all the bet that comes between d and f you're reading too much

into all right all right all right i get it wait that's me is i didn't know that i was with you vicky this isn't used to me Greg yeah so what we know how we do it we're at the greatest here turn it all right d for a tamraj for me read them baby if but me for tamraj i'm gonna change one to d sorry tamraj all right Danielle Lewis the last one yeah probably d again saying d i thought we might see more on the run sorry Danielle d not see from me exactly what i kind of expected

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favourite part of every show on the daily podcast we always start the show with your Spotify

comments and we can confirm we are going to do daily podcast leading into the iman 70 point three world championships in my beta in a few weeks time but when we don't have the daily podcast we're going to do Spotify comments at the end of every podcast just because we we think it's so fun so we think ending with it will be the funnest thing to do with all of our episodes so

“if you want to have your Spotify comment read out and discuss or pick the part next week”

then jump on today's episode that we release and leave a comment it can be about anything it can be about an opinion we've given on the show you can give us an opinion about anything we've set on the show or you can just say something random or take the piss out of one of us we we welcome at all so um Vicky did you want to start us off today yeah sure so Katie Dickerson said I feel like you guys own log set for a t-shirt that says I won the iman world championships and all

like what was this stupid nickname and that really made me laugh and I thought yes I'll play you one that the iman world championships and all of these boys can talk about is a bloody glove don't you dare put this on us you see one you listen back i have not yeah but that's not what's happening when we when we hit stop on the floor throw me under the bus Drew folks says as a mortal hydration slut myself I find it quite an interesting coincidence

that Lucy Charles Barclay walked through the marathon aid stations the only cup she didn't take or the mortal cups now I'm not saying mortal could have saved Lucy or Taylor's race I'm just saying

we'll never know and I just it's it's it's about time we get some mortal love on the pod you know

they just don't get any love and obviously Drew is a mortal slut so that's a plus one for immortal and I famously declined to the mortal hydration at Auguster and was beaten by R. E. Clare so uh and that's rock bottom imagine even mortal was just this like magic supplement that we're all shooting like but if you drink it you just have these great races can we try

“that in can appo in your next race which is iman bustleton I think we've announced that already”

haven't we if we haven't then appo's gonna race iman bustleton can you drink mortal at all the run aid stations and just report back I'm not trying to like in the last five k so if I do shit my pants I've only got five k to go I have drinking mortal by the way on the bike and boulder and I qualify for world so whatever that's right there we go that is numerical Mike Marshall says I don't know another podcast that would have me tracking Regan Hollyoke all day

and watching with with excitement when she finishes 13th and uh Mike I was tracking it probably more intently than the podium all day get stuffed moth and by the way I am getting that tattoo Jared says read the heat prep I can't help but wonder if the training creates adaptation that actually prevents one from recognizing the early stages of heat stress and going by feel can put you over the edge jack let's get an expert on the pod to break down what we saw

with Lucy and Taylor a lot of us pretend as I're dipping our toes into heat prep slash heat adaptations

in training and with the risks involved it would be amazing to hear from an expert doctor glove

could be the perfect man for the job and then Maddie Rue replied to that comment and said but not doctor hereg DARPA I actually really like this we'll do this for sure we'll get a heat per like a heat expert on we'll do a little 10 to 15 minute segment rhythm it will not be the gloves and it won't be the doctor hereg okay this one's like a little bit more serious and something I wanted to talk about johnson says anyone think the litter zones were insanely short

after the last table on both bike run it looked like it was a limiting factor in what athletes could get in especially on the bike and I just think I don't know about the last table but it seems on the bike if you grab something at the last table and you're trying to jug something and then

“you have to throw it it's just so short and it's actually with the the speeds of the pros I just”

think these littering zones need to be a bit longer you know extending at 50 meters is that really gonna put that much more strain on the volunteer so I think that's something that needs to be tightened up for next year in Iron Man racing yeah you almost need to discard your bottles and the ones you take from the aid station then going on your bike like some of the aid stations are too short for you to grab it take a drink and then throw it again you almost need to grab it take a drink

and put it into your bottle holder material shavey of butchered that name sorry Matthew I fix like Greg Hart it's like Greg Welch trying to pronounce solely off-set kind of which we haven't there was some comments on that and obviously we've not mentioned it but I've not sure we can we've noticed this data away from it but yes before we recorded the last daily

once for the day and then there was a comment yes exactly thing I don't know but we're trying

to piece less people off so okay Matthew it says I feel all alone in this but I decided I don't really like Kona and think it's shit boring flat bike and then a game of who dies I won because others got heatstroke that's not my definition of cool of a cool world champion I understand it's the Kona way and people get super hyped about what happened but I'm just unimpressed yeah at the end it was exciting with Kat and Solvex but no Kona is shit a little disclaimer

I really wanted Lucy to win so maybe I'm just bitter and I think you you're not entirely wrong there

“and but I think that's what makes Kona exciting right it has like being out there in those”

desolate lava fields it's got some like weird massacistic appeal in some way like that being it's

so challenging it's so difficult I think that's what attracts people to Kona yes the course isn't that exciting but the bike isn't flat the bike is actually quite hilly you'd be surprised it actually how much elevation is in that Kona bike course the run is just a longer highway it's quite boring but yeah I think that loneliness and yeah desolation of the lava fields kind of make it unique but this we like this comment from Matio though like the like this is just a strong take and we need more

really strong takes on the Spotify comments like if you give a strong take I can almost guarantee you that's what will get your comment read we love a strong take and whether he's right or not doesn't really matter but like like he said I quote there's elements of that you almost can't argue with but it just depends what your opinion is do you think that's the the whole drawer of the sport because I think the thing with T100 is it feels quite achievable there's nothing that you watch and go

wow this is crazy but you watch Kona on the weekend as like a half triathlon fan or a non triathlon fan sorry two weekends ago and you can't help but be like wow this is one of the craziest things I've

“ever watched in my life how do these people do that and I feel like that's what at some point”

drew all of us to long course triathlon so I don't think you can take away from that being a big factor as to why I meant is as big as it is just that this is insane like this is crazy how a human's doing this element that the Kona provides herbs to 12 says I wonder how much time Taylor gave up by choosing non-hero socks and non-hero helmet and stopping for special needs now Apple we actually had this as something we were going to talk about on the last of the daily podcast

but we just scrapped it from the running sheet but what do you think because you were big on this but leading into the race and then you didn't really get a chance to talk about after the race yeah and I mean I don't want to sit here behind my microphone and tell Taylor how to race and how to ride and what equipment she should be using but I think if you're taking the time to put on socks for the bike it just makes sense to me to make them aerosols like

if you're spending that 10 seconds you may as well use the big long socks that pull up halfway up to your knee or even the four ones that go all the way up to your knee and get that arrow benefit

“right and I think the same can be said about the arrow helmet if you're losing 10 watts choosing a”

slower helmet yes it's cooler but then if you're riding 10 watts higher you're also generating more body heat right so does is that a net neutral and I mean Taylor did some wind tunnel testing I'm sure she tested the different helmet setups but it is a little bit interesting to me that she yeah chose slower tires as well something a little bit more puncture resistant and yeah not putting on aerosols like I counted about 10 to 15 watts pretty easily

that she could have saved but yeah I mean I don't want to sit here and tell her what equipment and things to use like she's a professional she's done the testing and she made those decisions hard to give advice to someone who needs you every Wednesday morning as well um and then I just want yes or no for these two points that herbs to 12 mags in this same comment cat wins the race if Laura wasn't there yes or no no no no no and then Lucy or Taylor win the race

if the other wasn't there yes Lucy yes Taylor no no yes Lewis WL Williams says you all saying Taylor Nim might take all year to get fit again and then 20 to 26 she's going to win what's going on get on the fence and then there was another similar comment from John Sean V12 that said try hour he's quoting us once your body shuts down after a heat episode it takes

months or years to recover and your body will never let you reach near that level again also the

tri hour my favourite for Conan Tony's 26 is Taylor Nim we've been called out guys and then they

going that deep on having in a heat episode could write you off a year it might not do they might

“be absolutely fine but it could really write you off for a long time so I think in our hypothetical”

or 20 to 26 situation we're talking about if I also care if they take it steady if they get back into things in the right process they do all the testing then yeah they then Taylor could have a chance of about Taylor we think is going to win next year but we don't yet know what the long term effects are going to be for her also the loss of consciousness is a really important factor so if you lose consciousness because of it aka Johnny Brownlee or Emma Palant Brown

it's just known that you're not going to be the same in the heat again but Taylor we're talking

about Taylor here because that's kind of where we've contradicted ourselves Taylor didn't lose

consciousness so you might not know that subtle difference but that is a very important difference and right now as long as she stays healthier and looks after herself she can come back as strong as ever Keith Murph says long time listener many time commenter all unread so here you go Keith that you know that little little comment there got me attracted so I decided to read it. That's also untrue though Apple we did read one of Keith's comments on the daily going

upon gas. Keith you've lied to us to get on the show again. Pretty smart. The fans want to know with how much crap the pod gives the commentators on the live stream or justified we'll be getting an alternate stream of the last T 100 race and I thought about it and I've always wanted to do an alternate stream you know you weren't

invited well yeah jack didn't invite me on the first one but I've always thought it would be fun

to like crack a couple of beers and just you know let loose a little bit but then I'd also be exposing myself to all the ridicule that I've given all the commentators over the many many years so I don't know maybe we could work something out jack we could get us get us on another alternate stream. I'd like to do one for the T 100 Grand Final I don't know if they'll like let us after the first half of this podcast Nick and Sam they listen to the podcast they might they might

reneg the the offer for us to do the alternate streams after hearing it but I don't know if it's something we want to do every race it's a lot of work it's kind of it's hard to to organize it all I don't know if it's actually worth all the effort that goes into it but I would like to do it for the big ones so like guitar the Grand Final this year I think it would be funny for all of us obviously excluding Bikki could could do it but let's wait and see Shantel Woodock says absolutely

no one in my family understood why I was shouting no at my TV at 1am in the morning that's the

“definition of pretend to behave you're from you Shantel and we absolutely love it so that's what”

we're here for your family don't need to understand you just tuning to us every week and know that we understand you except Bikki because she was asleep at that point for corona and at that point for Walingong so Bikki making a habit of not not joining you as a pretend to be no and I've been called out for it a couple of times in the comments as well sorry guys but sleep is golden right now I'm probably not going to sleep for the next year so I need it

Bikki is one of the most dedicated triathlon fans and experts in the game but she is about 45 weeks pregnant so she's got her excuses and then the last comment I think the most interesting one but maybe I'm a little boss Nicky Rigby says thoughts on Colin Shartier coming back to triathlon so just some updates it's 158 days from when this podcast released until Colin Shartier's band's

“done so that's March 26 I think March 26 2026 did something like that so what's that like 25 weeks”

give or take what do we think guys should Colin return to the sport in March April next year should you come and race ocean saw? No is he planning to or is it just speculation? Nicky's just asking what our thoughts are on Colin coming back? No getting out of here I don't think Colin would come back I think he expressed that he's done right I mean things can change but I would not be a fan of it if I had to race Colin because if you've been doping you have like I feel like you

have those benefits for life like you have you've had that period of where you've been training at above what your body has allowed you to do like that doesn't just go away when you stop doping like you have you have those benefits I think for the rest of your life if we could get him on the pod to do an exclusive interview and actually tell what the whole thing was happening with the doping and who was helping him and all that I'd welcome him back but you know it doesn't seem like

any podcasts or can actually get him to do that for me it's as simple as you make that kind of decision

but for me that's how it works doesn't mean that you are the worst person in the world and you don't

“deserve a second chance at life and all the rest of it you can have all that but for me it excludes”

your right to be back in a league sport and I would love to see that as a there's a blanket rule so for me it's pretty simple no can we have a group vote on this and also can we have a Spotify comments vote and just whatever answer gets the most votes we'll do so should I send Colin Chartier a message and say Colin come join us on the podcast with 15 minutes and we'll talk about

do you want to come back do you plan on coming back you know you can ask him any doping questions

that you want whether he gives you the honest answer or not I'll at least ask so we'll do a group vote now and then combined with a Spotify comments vote so whatever you want if you want him to come on for 15 minutes and hear us asking questions or asking whether he's going to return to racing or he's plans for coming back to triathlon or if they existed all then just comment yep we want Colin or no we don't want Colin in the Spotify comments and it'll literally just be a popular vote

so Apple if he has new information that is not out there because he's he admitted to doing it all by himself right but if I hesitate to believe that so if he has new information that he could

“bring to light I think it would be good so yes yeah but we can't control what he's going to say”

so you can't put it dependent on that it's just got to be a yes or no no matter what we get from yeah for me then it's a no because I was going to say the same as Apple as if we're going to get something from him then yeah but actually you know what I don't think we need to hear it so no what if he writes that what if he says Vicky yes I'm going to return to racing that would be pretty interesting to know but I don't want to have it publicise like I don't think he deserves

the publicity like I said to to come back to elite professional sport to be a professional athlete as far as I'm concerned as a privilege and I think you forfeit that when you make that decision to dope and so I don't want to give extra attention like I said I'm sure he's a nice guy plenty of people who've been caught for doping are nice people and they deserve to have a nice life but they don't deserve to come back into elite sport and have publicity and all the rest of it so

for me now yeah this might sound contradictory to what I just said but fuck no that's not how

“I'm the pocket that was so good like that's what Vicky meant hey Apple doesn't even leave”

just down the street from you do you ever seem he lives in Denver I think he's a real estate agent I haven't seen him since the whole thing happened but maybe I could do a one-on-one jack if you want to uh te it up the fence sitter in the dopa the one-on-one the world's been crying out for all right pretenders that's the the show done for the week like I said it feels weird only doing one show a week but can confirm we are going to be doing the daily podcast leading into the

Iron Man 70.3 world championships in Mar Baer which low key is going to be probably the most stacked field of the year um and like I said if you want your Spotify comment read out and discussed or talked about on next week's podcast then make sure you leave one on this week's episode Vicky

Apple Greg thank you as always let's do it all again next week thanks Jack